


Right in the Ulnar

by willowbilly



Category: Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Attempted Holdup, Banter, Character "Death" Fix-it, Double Dating, F/F, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Humor, Jessica's Poor Table Manners, Light Angst, Malcolm Acting as Fifth Wheel on Said Double Date, Not Canon Compliant, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant, Post-Episode: s01e08 The Defenders, Swearing, Threats of Violence, established relationship(s) - Freeform, some actual violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 10:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13762503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowbilly/pseuds/willowbilly
Summary: “What, they want to stage a robbery? Here?” Claire hisses, equal parts alarmed and indignant. “Do they notseeLuke Cage and Jessica Jones sitting not twenty feet away? Do they not watch the news?”





	Right in the Ulnar

**Author's Note:**

> So this was supposed to be longer and better and also published, like, right after Defenders season one, but. Well. Here it is now, as is, I guess. Contains flippant, kind of jokey references to Jessica's alcoholism in line with how it's often treated on the show. Please note that the attempted holdup does involve a couple guns, if that's the sort of thing which might bother you in particular given that we live in a sucky violent dystopia and recent rl events reflect that. Take care of yourselves. 
> 
> ~Enjoy~

“Look,” Malcolm says, a few hours after having blundered into Jessica and Trish on their way out of Jessica's apartment and being invited along mainly at Trish's insistence on their double date with Claire and Luke to act as awkward third wheel, or maybe fifth wheel, or however the arithmetic worked out, “I'm just saying we should all get together on a regular basis and talk things over. About our experiences, and stuff.”

“Our traumatic experiences?” Luke asks dubiously. “Or experiences... in general?” He's dressed up a bit for the occasion, in a bleached white button-down and a skinny tie and a spiffy single-button sport coat which fits miraculously well over his herculean physique and everything. Malcolm feels practically frumpy in comparison in his ratty old t-shirt, the washed-out rusty red one with the little hole next to the collar. But then, it wasn't like he'd planned on doing much of anything tonight other than raiding Jessica's fridge for the groceries he'd stocked there himself, and it's not like Jessica's switched up _her_ usual attire, either, and seeing as he can smell her grody scarf from here he figures he'll cut himself some slack.

“You and your goddamn support groups,” Jessica says to Malcolm, rather scathingly. She's leaning back far enough in her chair to balance it on its back legs and has her feet hitched up onto the table, clompy black boots crossed at the ankles and propped right beside the bread sticks in lackadaisical defiance of all that is decent and mannerly. Fortunately the restaurant isn't quite upscale enough to bother with kicking her out for it, even if she is attracting a few choice glares of censure. “This is _exactly_ what you tried to set up with the Kilgrave survivors and look how fantastically _that_ turned out.”

“Mainly because Kilgrave was still out to _get_ us, then,” Malcolm feels obliged to defend. “And that one time you violated the sanctity of the safe space I was trying to foster by interrogating the people in it didn't precisely help it any.”

“Yeah, but if you'll recall I kinda _had_ to. Because again: Kilgrave. Out to get us, and shit.”

“Point,” Malcolm concedes, because she really had.

“Well I think a support group's an excellent idea,” says Trish, lighting up with the sort of immediate, emotionally invested encouragement which Malcolm thinks is second nature to her, or maybe an automatic reflex.

 _“God,”_ Jessica says in a directionless exclamation of complaint, throwing her head back as she does so in order to really sell the practiced performance of exasperation which she's putting on for them like the pro that she is. She totally missed her calling as an actress. She lies all the dang time and Malcolm's _heard_ her doing that eerily chirpy, friendly phone voice of hers. It's terrifying.

“Oh hush,” says Claire, casually sliding the bread sticks away from Jessica's grimy boots so as to relocate them to the extreme opposite end of the table. Luke snags one as they pass by and snaps the tip off to pop it into his mouth with a crunch and a slightly aggrieved, reluctantly interested air. “I think it's a great idea, too. I mean, who else are we gonna talk with about all this, right?”

“Right!” Trish seconds enthusiastically. Jessica takes a slug of her coke like it's alcoholic, which it might very well be given the hip flask Malcolm's pretty sure she's always carrying somewhere on her person.

“We just need someplace to hold a meeting,” Malcolm says. “Somewhere large, where we can get everyone together.”

“I'll ask Colleen if she'll let us use her dojo,” Claire says. “And we're presumably getting her and Danny and Misty in on this, too.”

“And Karen Page, that reporter friend of Matt-AKA-Daredevil's,” Trish adds. “And... Foggy? That Nelson guy, the other friend who was there at the precinct with us.”

“Wait, who told you about Matt being Daredevil?” Luke asks.

He and everyone else looks straight at Jessica, who shrugs. “I mean, she and Malcolm already figured it out on their own, so. Not like I was betraying some big well-kept secret, or anything.”

“It's not like it was hard to put two and two together,” says Malcolm.

“The dude's dead, anyway,” Jessica says in acid carelessness, her voice thin and wavering, and then bites her lip until it goes white, averting her eyes in either regret or shame or both at once, Malcolm isn't sure.

A natural lull in the ambient noise of chattering patrons, clinking silverware, and background music featuring an upbeat song fading to a downbeat end settles heavily over the table, emphasizing the mood's sudden, weaving swerve towards somber at the reminder of Matt Murdock's... absence.

Jessica pulls her feet off the table and crosses her arms, drawing into herself. Luke looks down at the bread stick in his hands and turns it around in his fingers, end over end, like he's suddenly realized how fragile it is.

“So we'll, uh. We're definitely inviting Karen and Foggy,” says Malcolm, trying to infuse his tone with just enough positivity to salvage the heretofore optimistic atmosphere but not enough to come across as a tactless dick for breaking their impromptu moment of mournful silence.

Trish loops an arm around Jessica's shoulders, pressing herself against her in wordless support, and some of Jessica's stiffness bleeds away as she presses back, relaxing into Trish with all the familiar, contented relief of a person returning home after a long day.

Luke clears his throat, raises his head, and gives a firm nod, his hand moving to enfold Claire's between their water glasses. “I'm in. Whatever you need.”

Claire beams at him in blindingly beautiful, brilliant approval, and he snorts a soft, almost bashful laugh through his nose as he grins in return, as ruefully helpless in the face of her affection as he is resolute in his decided purpose.

Trish twists in her seat enough to fix Jessica with an expectant gaze from point-blank range and quirks a single, eloquent eyebrow. Malcolm is honestly impressed at her Mister Spock-level of brow control. Heck, almost enough to forget that he's the blatantly odd man out, hanging around as he is beside a pair of lovey-dovey romantic couples who practically radiate enough domestic bliss to power a considerable portion of the Eastern Seaboard.

Almost. It's still kinda awkward as all get out, but he's found that simply imagining what the dessert menu might have to offer is an effective enough coping mechanism.

He's thinking chocolate cake. Chocolate ice cream cake. He's in his comfort clothes so he might as well go with comfort food and call it good. Eat his feelings, and what have you.

“Trish,” Jessica says. “Babe. Honeypie. If you really love me you'll let me sit this out, stay home, and drink myself into repression in peace and quiet.”

“Yeah, no. This is happening and you are very much an official part of it.”

“Motherfucking _shit.”_

“That's a _bit_ of an overreaction,” Trish says in mild rebuke, sounding a touch surprised but otherwise not in the least upset. Jessica expresses herself through vulgarity and ill temper as a matter of course. You get used to it.

“Not _that,”_ Jessica snaps, leaning in over the table and lowering her volume to a harsh, urgent whisper. “Over there, those two in that booth by the door. Bonny and Clyde are about to pull out their pieces and terrorize the place.”

Malcolm surreptitiously glances over and, sure enough, _there's_ another _disgustingly_ happy couple, this version accompanied by an intense public macking session and militantly-poised postures which strongly undermine the concealment of the sidearm-shaped bulges in his jacket and in her purse, respectively.

 _“Oh,_ no, _oh._ Yikes. Now that's just gross,” says Malcolm. It's like they're trying to eat each other's faces off. And the possibility of imminent gun violence is morally repugnant, too, but he's sitting at a table with the most competent and amazing protection squad he could've wished for, so he's not as panicked as he otherwise would be outside of the initial, unpleasant burst of adrenaline. Hands: Shaky. Stomach: Not nearly as interested in the dessert menu as he was a second ago. Head: Cool.

“What, they want to stage a robbery? Here?” Claire hisses, equal parts alarmed and indignant. “Do they not _see_ Luke Cage and Jessica Jones sitting not twenty feet away? Do they not watch the news?”

“Maybe they live under a rock,” says Jessica, with the kind of snotty snark best suited to a sarcastic twelve-year-old. “You don't know.”

“A hole in the ground wouldn't be much of a step down from our building,” Malcolm muses. “And the rent might be cheaper.”

“I cannot _believe_ this,” says Trish.

“That people can be this stupid?” Claire asks.

“No, well, _yes,_ but I mean that this is _precisely_ the same scenario they had at the end of _Pulp Fiction._ Except in a diner. And not during dinner hour. And also as a side note: Fuck Tarantino.”

“That motherfucking fuckhead,” Jessica chimes in with relish.

“Think they'll spring whatever crazy stunt it is they're planning on right when they finish kissing?” Luke asks. He and Jessica have shifted their weight, ready to move. Jessica has a hand on the backrest of the one empty chair.

“That's how it went down in the movie,” says Trish.

“Art imitates life,” Malcolm intones gravely. “Or. Life imitates art, or whatever.”

They all watch the skinny white couple obliviously make out for a little longer. Hands not wrapped around guns are roaming into increasingly risqué areas.

“I dunno, they might just skip the stick-up and have sex right there instead,” says Jessica, and swigs the last of her coke, ice cubes clinking. She crushes and chews one between her teeth, much more loudly and obnoxiously than Luke with his bread stick, and then spits the resulting meltwater back into the glass.

“Let's skip ahead as well,” Luke says. “Persuade them not to go through with anything they'll regret.”

“If you two need backup, I know Krav Maga,” Trish volunteers, perhaps more eagerly than was strictly necessary.

“And I've been taking self-defense,” says Claire, cracking her knuckles.

“And I am borderline useless in a fight but I'll square up anyway,” says Malcolm. He tries to crack his knuckles as well and quietly, painfully fails.

“Guys,” Jessica says, beginning to stand up, “there's a waiter making a beeline for them fast, gotta make a move now now now holy shit _now.”_

The couple pulls out their guns, the man making as if to leap up onto the table and use it as a stage for some no doubt grandiose proclamation. The chair Jessica hurls across the room catches him right in the gut the moment he opens his mouth and the impact instantly, ignominiously drops him into a crumpled, wheezing heap beside the much more neatly folded napkins.

“Game plan, what is it?” Jessica yells, half-lifting their table like she's about to fling that after the chair, tipping all their assorted cups and silverware and bread sticks onto the tile with a lot of clattering and the shattering of glass. Malcolm is pretty sure the table, this sizeable, solid wood monstrosity, will actually kill the lady _dead_ if Jessica hits her with it and he's not keen on a murder charge managing to possibly _stick_ this time around, so he grabs Jessica's elbow like a kitten lunging for a tree branch and hangs on for dear life in the hope of dissuading her, and, thank _fucking_ god, she hesitates. Probably worried about accidentally launching Malcolm along with it if she _were_ to Frisbee the thing.

In the meanwhile the woman is shoving out of her booth and fumbling with her purse, panicked and furious as she frees the gun and does the mechanical cocking or chambering or whatever it is which Malcolm supposes is the prerequisite to firing it.

“We should've worked our moves out in advance instead of _bantering,”_ Luke shouts, already striding to put himself between the wannabe Bonny and the rest of the restaurant. She gets off one round which bounces off of him before he's crushing the gun in his fist. “Ma'am,” he says in stern exasperation, as she blanches in abject horror and wobbles on her feet, “kindly take a seat.”

She does. Meek as a lamb.

“Was it banter?” Jessica asks, setting the gigantic table down with a thunk. “I had it pegged as the ramblings of dumbasses inured to petty danger.”

“Speak for yourself,” says Claire, surreptitiously putting a pair of— holy shit, were those brass knuckles outfitted with sick metal claw-spikes? The hell?— back into her bag. “This crap never gets any less scary.”

“Yup,” says Trish, relieving the knocked-out Clyde dude of his weapon and emptying the... clip? Thing? Well. Taking the gun apart with quick, practiced efficiency. Malcolm wonders if Krav Maga is a type of gun-fu. “There's kind of a thrill to it, though.”

“Yeah, no, not for me,” Claire says, flapping a hand in dismissal and sitting back down. “Nooo way.”

“It's a sex thing,” Jessica snickers. The _real_ scary thing out of everything which just went down is that Malcolm cannot tell whether or not she's joking.

Trish marches back to Jessica and whacks her on the shoulder. Jessica's snickering devolves into a cackle. “You're so fucking lucky I love you,” says Trish, and Jessica downright melts against her.

Malcolm's shaky knees finally buckle and he collapses into his improbably upright chair, and his perky butt has no sooner touched down than his phone is stridently blaring mariachi music at him from his back pocket and he's forced to spring back up to his feet and paw it out of his jeans so that he can answer it. “Hey, what's up?”

 _“Yeah hi so it's Foggy Nelson and thank freaking god you gave me your number because Claire isn't answering and me and Karen are freaking out and Matt is fucking alive,”_ Foggy shrieks in one breath, loudly enough that even without Daredevil's alleged super-senses Jessica must overhear something because she whips her head around so fast that her hair smacks Trish in the face.

 _“Who's_ alive?” Jessica demands, as Trish thoughtfully spits hair from her mouth with an expression of pure intrigue regarding Malcolm's bewilderingly out-of-the-blue phone call revelation.

“Are you sure?” Malcolm asks Foggy, trying not to shriek into the receiver himself. This shit is heart-attack-level surprising. Maybe he should work on not getting himself so emotionally entangled in the fates of the friends of his friendly acquaintances. Ones whom he's never even met. Yet.

 _“I swear to all that is holy and especially to these blessed nuns that I would not be yelling my head off at you if I was not absolutely certain,”_ Foggy screams, although a bit more quietly.

“Is that Foggy?” Trish asks.

“Matt's _alive?”_ Jessica presses.

“What?” Claire cuts in.

Luke sighs heavily and mutters something to himself about getting some answers once everyone's calmed down enough to give them straight.

“I am going. To fucking. Kill him,” says Jessica, beginning to gaze into the middle distance with an eerie level of resolute serenity.

“Not,” says Malcolm, “before we drag him to our first support group meeting. Which I suppose you'll have to come to, now.”

 _“Fine,”_ Jessica snarls. “I'm coming to your dumb meeting.”

Trish and Claire perform twin fist pumps of victory in the background. Luke plucks the phone from Malcolm before he can also finish a fist pump, pulls out a pen and a notepad, and starts to take down the directions as Malcolm decides that there are, in fact, moments when all is retconned into being right with the world.

“When do I get _my_ phone call?” asks the would-be Bonny.

“For goodness' sake, lady,” says Malcolm, “learn how to read a room.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
